The ability to easily add tables to your content can be very useful. Tables are great for sorting and presenting data to visitors in a way that makes your information easier to understand.
The WordPress visual editor is great, but there are some things that it doesn’t let you do by default, like being able to easily create tables.
Although you can add tables manually to your content in WordPress if you have knowledge of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), for many non-technical users, this is simply not a feasible option.
Fortunately, you can do almost anything you need done on a WordPress site with plugins, and creating tables is no exception.
In this tutorial you will learn how to easily create and add tables into your posts and pages with no coding skills required.
How To Create And Add Tables Into Your Content In WordPress
To add tables to your WordPress posts or pages with no coding skills required, we’ll use a FREE plugin called TablePress.
TablePress
A very powerful and time-saving plugin that makes creating, editing and managing tables in your WordPress posts and pages a very simple and easy process is TablePress.
TablePress requires no knowledge or skills coding HTML, CSS, etc. It provides a simple user interface that allows you to easily edit your table data. You can add any kind of data to your tables.
An additional JavaScript library can be used to include features like pagination, sorting, filtering, and more for visitors. You can include the tables into your page content using shortcodes and even display tables using text widgets.
A table can also be imported and exported from/to CSV files (e.g. from Excel), HTML files, and JSON formats.
This plugin was written and developed by Tobias Bäthge and is licensed as Free Software under GNU General Public License 2 (GPL 2).
Using TablePress WordPress Plugin – Step-By-Step Tutorial
To create and add tables to WordPress using TablePress, install and activate the TablePress plugin.
You can download this plugin here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress
Or install it directly from within your Dashboard …
Once you have installed and activated the plugin, you will see a new menu item has been added to your admin menu called TablePress …
Click on TablePress and select Plugin Options from the list of submenus …
The “Plugin Options” area affects the plugin’s styling and display settings …
For example, in the “User Options” section, you can modify where the TablePress menu entry appears on your Dashboard menu.
By default, the menu item displays around the middle of your menu. If you plan to use this plugin often, then you can easily position the menu item near the top of your admin menu by selecting “Top-level (middle)” in the User Options > Admin menu entry dropdown menu …
The TablePress menu item will now show close to the top area of your menu list …
You can also play with other options in the “Plugin Options” area, like table formatting styles, default language, and so on. Leave all default options as they are if you don’t need to change things in this section.
With TablePress, you create and edit tables within the plugin section. Tables are then placed via a shortcode into your pages and posts. The table will then display when your post or page is published or updated.
The advantage of working directly from the plugin is that you can easily change the data inside your tables without having to open any of your posts. The plugin then updates all of your table information inside all posts and pages where the table has been added to your content.
To add a new table select TablePress > Add New Table …
Enter a table name, a description (optional), and the number of rows and columns you want for your new table into the “Add New Table” form in the Add New tab, and click on the Add Table button to create your new table. You can edit the name, description and size of your tables at anytime…
Once your new table has been created, it will appear in the “All Tables” list and get assigned a unique Shortcode ID …
The TablePress shortcode lets you easily insert tables anywhere in your content simply by typing or copying and pasting the shortcode wherever you want to display your table …
Once a new table has been created, adding content to it is really easy.
In the “Table Content” section, just click in the cell and type or paste the content you want to display. You can add text, images and format your content (e.g. add bold text, insert hyperlinks, etc …)
Once your new table is created, the plugin also displays additional options for configuring your table.
For example, in the “Table Options” section you can select the first row of your table to be the table header and the last row of the table to be the table footer, make the background of consecutive rows alternate in colour, highlight rows when a visitor hovers their mouse over the table, print the table name and description above or below the table, and more …
You can also modify your table content after creating it in the “Table Manipulation” section. You can perform a range of operations on your table, such as adding images or links, hiding, showing, inserting, deleting and cloning selected columns and rows, adding new columns and rows, combining cells, etc …
You can also enable JavaScript library features in your tables that will allow visitors to sort, filter and search your table content, set the number of table rows displayed on your site (and also allow users to specify the number of rows displayed), display table information, etc …
You can preview your table anytime, by clicking the Preview button …
A preview window will open in your web browser allowing you to preview your table. Certain features such as the JavaScript options are disabled in preview mode, but will display when your post or page is published …
Click the Save Changes button after you are done editing to update your new table information …
After you have created one or more tables, you can view a list of all your tables by going to TablePress > All Tables …
All your tables are displayed in a list. You can edit, see the shortcode, copy, export, delete and preview tables …
Using The Shortcode
You can insert tables into any pages and posts with a shortcode.
Click on the Show Shortcode menu item below the table title to get the shortcode …
The plugin also adds a shortcode menu icon to your WordPress content editor. This allows you to easily insert tables into your posts and pages while working on your content.
Place your cursor where you want the table to be inserted then click the TablePress menu icon …
TablePress Menu Icon In Visual Editor Screen
Note: You can also insert a table when working in the “Text” area of the editor …
TablePress Menu Icon In WordPress Text Editor Screen
Clicking on the menu icon displays a list of all existing tables.
Select the table you want to insert into your content and click Insert Shortcode …
Your TablePress shortcode will be added …
Your table contents will display as soon as you publish your post or page …
As stated earlier, one of the great things about this plugin is that you can edit data after publishing the table without having to edit your post or page. Just tweak the content in the plugin area, then save the new table settings and refresh your content to view the updated content.
Another great time-saving feature of this plugin, is that if you plan to keep adding new data to an existing table, just export your current table, then add new items, make changes, etc. You can then re-import your table file with the news changes and your table content will be automatically updated throughout your site.
To export an existing table, select TablePress > Export a Table in the WP admin menu …
In the “Export Tables” section, select the table(s) to export (tip: select multiple tables by holding down the “Ctrl” key), then select the Export Format you want(e.g. CSV) and any other export options you’d like to make and click on the Export Table button to download the file to your hard drive …
After changing and resaving your file, you can then re-import the table into WordPress.
To import a table, select TablePress > Import a Table …
TablePress can import tables from existing data, such as CSV file data, from a spreadsheet application, an HTML file, or its own format.
To import a table, select and enter the import source in the “Import Tables” section. You can also import multiple tables from a compressed (ZIP) file and choose whether to import tables as a new table or write over an existing table.
To learn more about the plugin, including accessing documentation about additional features, or get plugin support, contact the plugin author, etc., click on the “About Tab” in the plugin admin section, or select TablePress > About TablePress …
As you can see, TablePress is an extremely powerful time saving plugin that is free and will help you easily create and embed tables into your WordPress posts and pages.
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